Large organisations often have several geographically separate branch sites which each have multiple machines connected across their own local network such as a Local Area Network (“LAN”). These machines are coordinated from a central or controlling location, across a larger network such as a Wide Area Network (“WAN”). As part of the systems management, software and data have to be delivered to the multiple machines at the branch sites across the larger network.
Microsoft™ SMS™ (Systems Management Server) is a known systems management solution, managing networks and software using a hierarchical mechanism that is controlled from one or more central sites. This has worked well where the branch sites are connected to a central site using permanent high bandwidth connections but has been less than ideal for branch sites with low bandwidth connections and/or mobile users with intermittent connections. This is mainly due to the fact that, in the absence of external control, multiple machines at one branch site will independently try to download new material from a central site at the same time, thereby putting a heavy load on the larger network. Meanwhile, for those users with intermittent connections, the download of data typically has to be repeatedly restarted.
Microsoft™ have developed a system called Background Intelligent Transfer Service (“BITS”) which, in the case of interrupted file transfers, allows for transfer of a file to be picked up from where it was left off, which helps mitigate the intermittent connection problem. BITS can also throttle network traffic based on a local network card's bandwidth consumption. However, the throttling works at the level of the individual machines and does not deal effectively with the high combined load of all the machines trying to download material from the central site at the same time.
It is an option to install servers at the branch sites and to download new software and data to these local servers which would then make the updates available locally. This reduces the load on the larger network but is an expensive solution since the local servers demand new hardware and involve implementation, management and maintenance costs.
It is possible instead to use one of the local machines effectively as a server, downloading updates to shared data storage on that “server” machine and then letting the other branch machines obtain their updates from it over the local network. However, this is likely to degrade the performance of the machine being used as a “server” quite significantly. All the local machines will be used for other purposes and the additional workload when having to service multiple requests from other machines for copies can easily slow down the “server” to an unacceptable level. This has been ameliorated to some extent by a product known as SMSNomad Branch, in which local machines elect one of themselves in real time to act as the “server”, but this still means a significant additional workload for the elected machine.
SMSNomad Branch is a known product of 1E Ltd and information about the product is available from 1E Ltd, for example on the Website www.1e.com or by contacting 1E at CP House, 97-107 Uxbridge Road, W5 5TL, London, United Kingdom.